ORX News

Greetings, Kings and Queens!

Just in time for the 1st year in Early Access we've prepared the next big update! The Kingdom Come update brings Villages, Advisors, and changes to ORX, laying the basis for the game to be more exciting and engaging!


[h3]Elemental Villages[/h3]


Elemental Villages are the evolution of the idea behind the Neutral Buildings and Attribute Vaults. Back when we introduced them, our goal was to incentivise spreading your city around the map in order to get the bonuses provided by the Neutral Buildings. However, since the auras were only 3x3 tiles in size, you could only do so much with their buffs — and for Dune Reavers there was no point in sitting inside them since ORX rarely got close enough to make use of the bonuses. And so using the Neutral buildings and Attribute Vaults became a very niche strategy, but it didn’t solve the underlying issue.

Now it’s time to make the missions feel like you’re uniting an actual Kingdom! To claim a village you just need to build something on a tile adjacent to it — same as always. After that, you’ll receive a global buff, tied to the village’s corresponding element. But wait, there’s more! By completing village quests you can increase the potency of the buff and, eventually, transform the village into an additional Town Center! And you’ll really want those extra “hearts”, because of…

[h3]ORX perks and rebalance[/h3]


In their unending crusade to eradicate all life, the ORX acquired new skills. For example, ORX Besieger now permanently lowers the maximum health of the buildings he attacks. And even the feeble ORX Archers became a bigger menace! Not only that, but the ORX will also capture unclaimed Elemental Villages, converting them into camps that spawn additional elemental ORX every night. As a player, you’re encouraged to find weak points in their strategy and come up with an effective way to beat the Greenskins. And to help you with this, we have two more new additions.

[h3]Advisors[/h3]


Sometimes you need a specific thing to help you turn the tide of battle, and the Advisors offer precisely that. While they’re not a “get out of jail free” card, the Advisors can help you where it counts by providing specific cards to complement your deck. Each Advisor follows a certain theme and will grant you his powers when you play their card. However, you have to be mindful about using them as they operate on Fragile charges — a new type of card charges which do not restore at the end of the mission. This is the first iteration of the Advisors, and we already have plans to make them even more impactful, while also introducing an engaging way to restore the Fragile charges.

[h3]Card Shop[/h3]


To deal with more specialised enemies you need more specialized tools. Previously, adding skills and global changes to the ORX would be impossible, as the cards a player can get for a deck were randomized. But now, there is an easier way to get the cards you need for your strategy to work. At the start of every act, you will be greeted by the Card Shop, with a selection of cards, artifacts, means to remove unwanted items, and buttons to increase or decrease the Corruption. The Card Shop uses a new currency called Crowns, which you get for winning a mission. Together with random Events and Vaults, you’ll get your core build running in no time!

[h3]Afterword[/h3]
Of course, these changes are only the beginning — both because we have more ideas and because we want to hear what you think of the changes! Share your feedback anywhere you’d like — in ORX Steam Discussions, our official Discord server, or even in the comments under this post!




[h3]Gameplay[/h3]

• Introduced Elemental Villages — global buffs, transforming into Town Center, ORX camps
  
• Introduced The Advisors — Fragile charges, 4 Advisor archetypes for each faction
  
• Introduced the Card Shop — Crowns, card removal, Corruption level change
  
• Introduced ORX perks — ORX gain perks depending on the Corruption levels.
  
• ORX wave rebalance — now waves usually feature only 1 or 2 ORX types
  
• ORX clans remake — each clan now consists of a single ORX type
  
• New ORX clans — support clans
  
• New ORX type — flying ORX healer
  
• Town Center rebalance — now all Town Centers are equipped with towers and 3 rune slots
  
• Corruption changes — now it has levels 0-4 instead of operating on a scale of 0-100
  
• Elemental effects rebalance — any object can reach only 1 level for any element. Any subsequent elemental effects rewrite the previous one
  
• Weather effects rebalance
  

[h3]Visuals[/h3]

• New animation for building destruction
  
• New animation for building restoration
  
• VFX for certain ORX perks
  
• New visuals for Town Center
  
• Elemental VIllages VFX
  
• VFX changes to all projectiles for improved coloring
  

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• Fixed a rare bug causing the endless loading in the final mission of Act 4
  
• Fixed Boss death animation not playing when a Boss is defeated
  
• Fixed Giga ORX beam damaging only one target
  
• Fixed the Neuro Rune not working
  
• Fixed a rare bug causing the game to freeze when pausing the mission as Dune Reavers
  
• Fixed multiple assorted crashes
  
• Other minor bug fixes
  

See you in the next update, and don't forget to follow us on Social Media for the news, memes and just generally good time!

Greetings, Royal ORX slayers!

ORX is approaching its Early Access Anniversary, so it’s time to talk about our current and future plans for the game — with the updated Roadmap and lots of teasers!

First of all, we’re so thankful to everyone who decided to support ORX in Early Access! Without you nothing would be possible, and we feel a special bond with you, early adopters. Coincidently, this is also a large reason why ORX is still in Early Access — we feel obligated to substantially improve the game based on the feedback we’ve received from all of you in these past months.

We'd like to take a moment to apologise for not getting ORX to version 1.0 this year, and a somewhat slow update schedule. But rest assured no part of this was due to a lack of capability or an excess of naps!

Far from that, we’ve been hard at work internally discussing some really big changes and upcoming additions to the game. And now, it’s time we finally share them with you — our dear players!

*Click the image to open it in full resolution

As you can see, the Roadmap became considerably bigger, yet at the same time more focused and direct. There are so many items on it, that we didn’t have enough space to elaborate on some of them! As such, we’re going to tell you more about most important roadmap beats in this post, so you know what to look forward to!



The first major addition on the horizon is, of course, the Boreal Nomads. We worked hard to provide this faction with truly distinct gameplay, and now we’re confident it’s going to feel different, yet familiar compared to other factions. As promised in our Lore Devlog, we’re currently writing its 2nd part, focused specifically on gameplay — coming up very soon!

Boreal Nomads are going to feature indirect controls for their units. The Giants have a will of their own: hunting, gathering Miracles and buying items from your village! You might be wondering how this looks in practice, and what exactly is a Miracle? Be on a lookout for our Gameplay overview devlog!

This 3rd playable faction will be added to the game in two parts: the initial release will feature all of the mechanics and every important card, and the 2nd release will provide cards to open up more playstyles and maybe introduce some additional mechanics.



Before the Boreals however, we’re planning to add couple new systems targeted to enhance the strategy aspects of the game and increase replayability — Elemental Villages and Advisors.

Villages are the evolution of the Neutral Buildings you’re already familiar with. This time, though, they can be captured by both the player and the ORX! To capture a village you need to simply build something on a tile adjacent to it — same as always, — this will grant you global buffs depending on the village’s elemental type. However, if ORX manage to capture it first, then you’d better prepare to face off against Elemental ORX, supercharged with an according element. We hope that Villages will provide more strategic elements and breathe new life into missions.

Players, who have tried out the Experimental Branch of the game, already know about the Advisors, which we tested couple cycles ago. We’ve heard your feedback, and felt ourselves that this system wasn’t engaging enough, so we changed some things! Now Advisors provide useful abilities or cards, which you can play get on demand during missions, by expending one of the Advisors “charges”.

In their first iteration these won’t be refillable, but we’re thinking of ways to change this in future updates. We hope that this system will provide players with a way to complement their playstyle and an additional layer of tactics.



Giving more power to the players is great, but we’d like ORX to be more engaging and pose a bigger threat as well. So we’re giving some power back to the greenskins! Since the deck builder is finally coming to the game, it’s only natural that ORX should demand certain tools and strategies to deal with them. We’re changing the clans to be uniform and feature a single ORX type, and also making them more distinct from each other — with each clan posing a unique threat and nudging the player to use specific cards.

For example, ORX archers now deal higher damage, but they will also lose their composure when attacked by melee units. Additionally, we’ll also tackle wave behaviour in order to make it more engaging and have a better difficulty curve. With these changes we’re bringing “menace” back into “greenskin menace”!

*Concept visualisation - final implementation may vary.

Next up are Smart Events — a thorough expansion of the existing random events. Inspired by other deck-building games, we’ve decided to add new mechanics to our random events to make their outcomes less predictable and more meaningful. We haven’t decided how Smart Events will look just yet, but they will most likely include memory and precision checks, randomization, and maybe even mini-games.

Events will also receive logic improvements, making quest chains and branching stories possible. After all, even a good story gets stale after awhile, and changing things up a bit is sure to make the game all the more exciting!

*Concept visualisation - final implementation may vary.

Now let’s talk about meta-progression and what the Throne Room will bring to ORX.
Currently, players can only unlock new cards, artifacts, acts, and factions by accumulating points at the end of the run. We want to improve this and make meta-progression more interesting — add new kinds of unlocks, a way to showcase your achievements and marry this system with the overall game.

This is where the Throne room comes into play! It will be your main hub, where you can find even more new systems (still very WIP), set up decorations, brush up on ORX lore, see your overall progress, and interact with Advisors.

We also have plans to expand the Advisors with this update to include new interactions, means to regain their charges, and maybe even a little something extra! Once we add the Throne room you can finally be the lord of your castle at all times.



And finally, let’s talk about Void Arcanists. As you might’ve guessed, it’s the code name for the 4th and final playable faction! Since we only have the concepts for its ruler, we don’t have a lot of details to share just yet, but we still want to spoil you a bit with the faction’s fantasy we’re aiming to fulfil.

Void Arcanists come from the Western and Eastern Void Poles — the parts of the world where Medea clashes with the Void, affected by the Corruption the most. They’re the greatest scholars in the lands of Medea and pursue the knowledge of arcane manipulation and the art of artifice — unlocking the extraordinary potential in any object and animating them.

Their towns rise above the clouds with enormous pagodas, resting upon floating islands. And their armies consist of arcane beings, machinery and… reanimated cadavers. With their minds veiled by the Corruption, Void Arcanists see magic as a utility to achieve enlightenment and goals bigger than any human’s life. Are you prepared to discard your morality in pursuit of building the biggest empire known to men?

That's all for now! We hope this devlog covers anything from the Roadmap which might’ve been a bit unclear, but if you still have questions please feel free to ask them in the comments!

We’re happy to finally reveal the updated roadmap to you all and feel immense determination to deliver everything promised. We have such an amazing community and we want you to have an equally amazing game! Thank you for supporting us on this journey — be it by providing feedback or by simply playing and enjoying ORX. See you very soon in our upcoming Boreal Nomads gameplay overview and updates!

Make sure to join our official Discord server and follow us on Twitter to learn more about the development of the game, get a first peek at upcoming content, or just to say hi to the team!

Greetings, Kings and Queens!

We've prepared a small content update just in time for Steam Summer Sale — prepare to face-off 3 new orx commanders and 2 new orx types!

Grab the game with -30% off and overcome the new threat!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1071140/ORX/

[h2]PATCH NOTES[/h2]
[h3]Gameplay[/h3]

• Avenger – new orx commander – a ruthless rogue which buffs health of other orx for every fallen ally
  
• Wiz – new orx commander – a cunning mage which adds curses to player’s deck each night
  
• Power Gainer — new orx commander — a brutal strongorx buffs damage of other orx each night
  
• ORX Trojan – new orx type – a wooden contraption which tries to reach your city and deploy the orx hidden inside
  
• ORX Demolisher – new orx type – an orx with a giant dynamite stick, which runs up to your buildings in hopes of blowing them up
  
• Adjusted wave composition in Acts 1 and 2 for a smoother difficulty curve
  

[h3]Visuals[/h3]

• Standardised sizes of al units and adjusted them
  
• Glowing eyes on orx are visible until the very edge of FoW
  
• Added visual effects for instakill proc
  

[h3]Game Optimization[/h3]

• Improvements to texture atlas logic
  

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• Fixed roads and flags being too blurry
  
• Fixed roads being fully opaque during tile placement
  
• Fixed tolltips logic
  
• Fixed layer order for orx graves
  
• Fixed layer sorting order for some decorations
  
• Fixed orx animation slowdown in mission preview
  

Make sure to join our official Discord server and follow us on Twitter to learn more about the development of the game, get a first peek at upcoming content, or just to say hi to the team!

Greetings, ORX slayers! As we eagerly anticipate the arrival of the 3rd playable faction, it's time to unveil some information about it. The introduction to the Boreal Nomads will come in two parts — starting with the faction’s lore in part 1 and the gameplay overview in part 2. Without further ado, let’s welcome the Boreal Nomads!

Boreal Nomads represent an unlikely alliance between the giants called Boreals and tribes of men, who once were nomads. Yet, how did the faction emerge? Well, curiously enough, we’d first have to start with Rune Guardians — the 1st playable faction in ORX.



Before the events of the game, there was the Great Empire of Medea — a vast kingdom, which enjoyed prosperity thanks to ancient magic. However, that same forces eventually became the very reason behind its downfall, causing the Arcane Upheaval — a ruinous event, which destroyed the Empire and forever scarred the entire World.

In the aftermath, the surviving citizens, overwhelmed by grief, desperation, and fear, established the Guardian Inquisition. Their goal was to eradicate all forms of magic to prevent further calamities. The Inquisition eventually grew into a new government — the order of Rune Guardians.



Yet not everyone agreed with the new order’s beliefs and methods. All manners of mystics, seers and druids, now becoming subjects to prejudice, were forced to either conform or go into exile. Those who cherished their beliefs more than a peaceful life, left their homes and wandered the lands of Medea for years as nomadic tribes.

Already adapted to the harsh winters of Northern Medea, the nomads decided to move even further, settling in the Northern Iceplanes. Only there they could live their traditional lifestyle in peace — away from the Rune Guardians and the dangers of the constantly changing outside world. However, these barren lands were not uninhabitable, and soon the nomads found out Iceplanes were the home to the mighty Boreals.



At first, the relationship between the two races was rather cold — with occasional conflicts or trading, depending on how harsh the winter was. However, frost and hunger can turn even rivals into friends. The two races started helping each other, sharing cultures, and eventually, made an alliance.

Thus, the nation of the Boreal Nomads was founded!



Leaving their nomadic lifestyle behind, Boreal Nomads have established many settlements in the Northern Iceplanes. With the wisdom of their Tsar and the might of the Boreals, the nation managed to not just survive, but thrive in these unforgiving lands. And the bonds between the two races grow ever stronger now, as they face their biggest challenge yet — the threat of ORX.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this brief lore overview for the Boreal Nomads! Next time we’ll discuss their core gameplay features, which are going to be, as always, unique and very different compared to the other two factions.

Thank you for joining us on this journey and showing us so much support, it means the world to us! We hope that the Boreal Nomads and the new content coming along with them will bring a lot of enjoyment to you, our dear players.

Make sure to join our official Discord server and follow us on Twitter to learn more about the development of the game, get a first peek at upcoming content, or just to say hi to the team!

Greetings, Kings and Queens!

While working on the upcoming 3rd playable faction, we’ve had a lot of fun ideas pop up — both from internal discussions and your feedback. Not wanting to cause a content draught while we develop Boreal Nomads, we’ve decided to deliver a big update featuring a lot of those ideas in form of new cards, abilities and artifacts! Welcome to Steel Meets Steel update!



With more and more cards available to each faction (with even more coming up in future updates), we didn’t want the players to miss out on their new unlocks because of random nature of the deckbuilding in ORX. Especially, since some cards have a high rarity. To amend this, our first approach will be the events — we’ve added couple new ones dedicated exclusively to Instant Kill and Neuro cards, so you have a hight chance of obtaining those during the campaign. Another way to combat this problem is a new one, and we’re very excited about it!

Introducing Universal Cards! These cards can’t be used as is, and instead transform into a random card from their parent category (weapons, units, dictates, runes) each time they come into your hand. They can only transform into the cards you’ve already unlocked and the end result will always be the same upgrade tier as the Universal card producing it — we feel like these cards will help a lot on your orx-slaying crusade, since they have common rarity and thus you can get them pretty easily, but can transform into any unlocked card from their respective category. |



Here’s a fun little story. Back in the day the Crossroads card had a nice totem drawn on the card. However, it was a bit hard to implement at the time, so the Crossroads did not include it when placed. For years our Lead Artist jokingly brought this up every time we’d mention the card. And now, after all this time, we’re finally adding the glorious totem to the Crossroads!

We did not stop there, however, and decided to make this card more desirable to the players. Being a dead-end on all sides and at the same time having slightly higher cost than normal roads, Crossroads in the past were very situational and most of the time would end up ditched at the next “discard a card” event. Now, to justify it’s higher base cost, and make it fit nicely into road building, the Crossroads grant the defence boost to all objects in it’s aura. Yes, both units and castles! Surround them with roads and place units to gain a hefty defence increase, or stack them outside the castle walls — either way you’re getting a great value out of Crossroads now.



We’ve also decided that it would be very fun to give stealth to the players! With Cairn of Stealth you can use the enemy tactic against them and hide all buildings and units in it’s aura. Yes, even your Town Center! Be careful, however, as the Cairn does not apply stealth to itself and doesn’t possess a lot of health. Units will also break stealth while attacking, so use it wisely.



Another option to throttle the orx’s advance is Reinforced Housing. Play it on on a group of Small Houses to build a fence around them, turning an otherwise defenseless village into an impregnable wall! By the way, this card was inspired by you, our dear players — after seeing how some of you were walling off the Town Center with Small Houses, we thought there should be a better way to use this strategy!



We’ve also added some unique interactions between unit camps and buildings. For example, you can now turn units into Bazaar or Barracks! This allows you to put these buildings more strategically, to extend the Military Zone from it’s borders or simply put a Bazaar further away from the Center to get more silver per caravan trip — all without waiting for roads.



Another building, which allows units to interact with it is Fight Club. You know the rules, though, so we're not allowed to say much about it. Just try moving your units to it and you will be rewarded with Initiative points (redraw chargers)!



Speaking of units and seizing the initiative — we’ve prepared a slew of new Dictates, allowing for new playstyles and enhancing existing ones. Have no weapons for new recruits? Play Curse to give them a huge damage boost! Have a unit camp with great stats, while the other warriors are underpowered? Use Motivation dictate to share the camp’s stats! Want the warriors to become stealthy assassins? Enhance them with the power of Shadow Amulet! Be wanted though, some of these Dictates have a downside, and wielders of the Curse’s power pay the ultimate price come dawn.

And when everything else fails, use Intakill Dictate or Rune to bestow your castles and warriors with a chance to instantly kill any non-boss orx. These pair exceptionally well with DoT weapons like Arbalest (DR), Poison Tower (RG) or the newly added Puddle Tower (RG).



The update doesn’t end here — we’ve added a lot more new cards and artifacts in Steel Meets Steel. Covering those would make this post twice as long, and we also don’t want to spoil everything! Read the patch notes to learn about all the new additions to ORX and head to the game to find out how they play!

[h2]PATCH NOTES[/h2]
[h3]New Systems[/h3]

• Universal Cards — transform into a random card from their parent category (weapons, units, dictates, runes) each time they are added to the hand. Universal Cards can transform only into the cards the player has already unlocked.
  

[h3]Gameplay[/h3]

• Crossroads rework — now they have a totem granting defence boost aura around the crossroads
  
• Instakill rune (RG) — set chance to instantly kill an orx when dealing damage
  
• Instakill dictate (DR) — set chance to instantly kill an orx when dealing damage
  
• Stealth Cairn (DR) — makes units and buildings in it’s aura invisible. Doesn’t apply the effect to itself. Actions (such as attacking orx) break the invisibility
  
• Element switch (Neutral) — switch the sephiroth on the target to a different random one
  
• Above the Law card (RG) — exhaust 1 selected road card from hand. Grant delayed gold for each road already placed.
  
• Roads of Gold (RG) — exhaust all road cards from hand, or If more than 40/30/20 roads have been placed, exhaust road cards from the deck. Grant increased gold capacity for each exhausted card.
  
• Fortify card (DR) — build a fence around the selected Small House and the adjacent ones in “+” formation.
  
• Random Tower card for (RG) — change X random towers in the castle to any random ones of the same type
  
• Puddle Tower card (RG) — transform towers into puddle spewing ones. Puddles persist on the ground for some time and deal damage to all orx standing inside them.
  
• Avenger Guild (RG) — Stores 10/15/25% of damage dealt by the castle. When the castle is attacked, releases stored damage in a wave with 2 range. Activates no more than once every 3 seconds.
  
• Demolitionist Guild (RG) — Disables all towers in the castle. For every destroyed castle wall releases a wave with 2 range dealing 10% of the castle's toatl health.
  
• Roof (Neutral) — build a palisade granting +X delayed gold for each unit camp in it’s vicinity.
  
• Hallucination (Neutral) — Select a warrior camp and reate it’s illusory copy. Illusions can’t attack.
  
• Insurance (Neutral) — Grants 5 delayed gold for each destroyed building. Effect ends at Dawn.
  
• Rune of Neuro Force (RG) — increase health, damage and defence by 3/5/10 for each unique camp/castle with this rune.
  
• Cairn of Stealth (DR) — hides all buildings and units in its aura. Does not apply the effect to itself.
  
• Training Camp (DR) — grants bonus 3/6/10% stats when merging camps in the same military zone as Training Camp.
  
• Fight Club (DR) — Move unit camp to this building to destroy them and gain +2/4/6 initiative.
  
• Reinforced Housing — builds a fence around the selected house and any adjacent ones in “+” formation. Orx can not destroy or pass through this fence.
  
• Camp to Barracks (DR) — transform a unit camp into Barracks.
  
• Camp to Bazaar (DR) — transform a unit camp into Bazaar.
  
• Curse (DR) — Dictate. Grants +181/404/666 damage to a unit until Dawn. Units under the Curse will be forever lost if they die in battle or when the Dawn comes.
  
• Motivation (DR) — Dictate. Units no longer can attack. Units share 20/40/60% of their stats with every other unit camp in the same military zone.
  
• Commander Neuro (DR) — Commander. Increase health, damage and defence by 5/10/20 for each carrier camp. Camps remain a carrier even if you change the commander.
  
• Recruiter (DR) — Commander. Each time another camp appears, increase damage, health and attack speed of the camp with this commander by 5/10/15%.
  
• King’s Legacy (Artifact) — receive (20 x Act Number - Amount of tiles with buildings) delayed gold on mission start and at dawn.
  
• Amplifier (Artifact) — receive Amplifier card on each redraw. Amplifier card raises the upgrade level of the next card played to its maximum.
  
• Dune Reavers Town Center now spawns warriors upon building Small House or triggering the process otherwise.
  

[h3]Random Events[/h3]

• Universal cards random event
  
• Mastery of Intant kill random event
  
• Neuro powers random event
  
• Architect brothers random event
  
• Updated descriptions for some older random events
  

[h3]Optimization[/h3]

• Further improvements to texture atlases and VRAM usage
  
• General under-the-hood optimizations and improvements
  
• Stability improvements
  

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• Fixed card rewards carrying over from a previous run
  
• Fixed loading into a previous campaign defeat screen upon starting a new campaign
  
• Fixed exclamation mark missing from unread entries in Encyclopedia
  
• Second iteration fix for inability to place Small House if too many units are present
  
• Fixed The Sphinx being activated only by certain Spell cards
  
• Fixed getting a copy of the artefact you already own on artefact selection screen
  
• Fixed Cards jittering in hand when bringing the cursor to the bottom edge of the screen
  

Let us know what you think of the new additions — as we’re always listening to player feedback. And who know, maybe your suggestion will become a basis for a new card in ORX!



Thank you for your support of the game, by providing invaluable feedback and simply playing the game! In upcoming devlogs we’ll cover more about the lore of Boreal Nomads and finally show their gameplay. If you don’t want to miss out on those — follow us on Social Media and keep an eye out for the new Steam posts. Until next time, orx slayers!